Idea Surplus Disorder #119

In this week's edition of Idea Surplus Disorder, we explore the tension between thinking deeply and moving quickly, and we share a powerful diagnostic for leadership maturity: what your team asks of you when problems arise.

From there, we’ll look at what happens when we outsource too much thinking to AI, why your best clients should use most of your services most of the time, and how the collapse of attention is reshaping the ways we live, lead, and learn.

And as always, you’ll find a mix of fun finds, practical insights, and thought-provoking quotes to help you lead, live, and think more intentionally.

I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here.

Ideas + Insights

I love these Five Levels of Work, defined by what teammates tell their leaders. Which level do your team members live in?

• Level 1: “There is a problem.”
• Level 2: “There is a problem, and I’ve found some causes.”
• Level 3: “Here’s the problem, here are some possible causes, and here are some possible solutions.”
• Level 4: “Here’s the problem, here’s what I think caused it, here are some possible solutions, and here’s the one I think we should pick.”
• Level 5: “I identified a problem, figured out what caused it, researched how to fix it, and I fixed it. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.”

Should we stop outsourcing our brains?

From proposals to meeting notes to brainstorming and outlining strategies, GPT has become a constant part of my workflow. It makes me faster, sharper, and produces better outcomes than me on my own. It reduces friction, fills in gaps and smooths over moments of uncertainty.

But that’s what worries me.

Maybe the more I use AI to think for me, the less I’m thinking at all. Sometimes I’ll start a sentence and stop because I know GPT will finish it better. I’ll have an idea, but I don’t explore it on my own because the AI will help me do it faster.

It’s not just saving time. I’m effectively skipping the struggle, and I wonder what that’s doing to my brain.

Your best clients should use most of your services most of the time:

1. Slim down your offerings. Each agency will be different in this regard, so instead of aiming for a perfect number of offerings, it may be better to dump a service line that your best clients don’t almost always use, especially if that’s been the case for at least one year. By this point I’m sure you’ve noticed the implication that your services are packaged, which is also a mark of an expert firm.
2. Resell to client frequently. Once or twice every year, you might want to have a specific conversation with any client who isn’t using most of what you offer, just to remind them what you can do for them, and how much more effective it can be to be offering a larger, integrated subset of services. This is definitely a job for the account person–it’s not good to have the sales staff insert themselves periodically.
3. Let your varying level of engagement be a guide. By that I mean to watch for when you get really pumped about helping a new client. Is there some mix of services that really let you shine? Are there a few where you dread what’s coming next? Maybe you don’t make as much money or you don’t feel as competent as a group.

What happens when everything becomes television?

The capacity for solitude, for sustained attention, for meaning that penetrates inward rather than swipes away at the tip of a finger: These virtues feel out of step with a world where every medium is the same medium and everything in life converges to the value system of the same thing, which is television. I don’t have the answers here. But we should figure it out soon. The marble is still spinning, but it is reaching the bottom of the bowl.

Why aren't smart people happier?

One way to spot people who are good at solving poorly defined problems is to look for people who feel good about their lives; “how do I live a life I like” is a humdinger of a poorly defined problem. The rules aren’t stable: what makes you happy may make me miserable. The boundaries aren’t clear: literally anything I do could make me more happy or less happy. The problems are not repeatable: what made me happy when I was 21 may not make me happy when I’m 31. Nobody else can be completely sure whether I’m happy or not, and sometimes I’m not even sure.

This is why the people who score well on intelligence tests and win lots of chess games are no happier than the people who flunk the tests and lose at chess: well-defined and poorly defined problems require completely different problem-solving skills. Life ain’t chess! Nobody agrees on the rules, the pieces do whatever they want, and the board covers the whole globe, as well as the inside of your head and possibly several metaphysical planes as well.

If you don’t value the ability to solve poorly defined problems, you’ll never get more of it. You won’t seek out people who have that ability and try to learn from them, nor will you listen to them when they have something important to say.

You’ll spend your whole life trying to solve problems with cleverness when what you really need is wisdom. And you’ll wonder why it never really seems to work. All of your optimizing, your straining to achieve and advance, your ruthless crusade to eliminate all of the well-defined problems from your life—it doesn’t actually seem make your life any better.

Related? Workers with higher incomes tend to get less sleep than those who earn lower wages:

On weeknights, workers with annual incomes between $40,000 and $60,000 sleep 11 more minutes than workers who make over $100,000, on average. On weekends, that gap widens to 18 minutes.

At Filament, we've been part of the Analog Resistance for a while. Want to join us?

Here’s a scary stat: the average person now logs nearly seven hours of daily screen time, which means you probably spend more time looking at screens than sleeping.

Maybe you’ve tried muting notifications or deleting certain apps, but it’s still hard to escape the constant influx of emails, alerts, and scrolling that drains your focus and creativity.

What if the antidote to digital fatigue isn’t found in better apps or stricter screen limits, but in reclaiming analog experiences?

Fun Finds

• An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Now.
• When the Mona Lisa came to America.
• Make your own LinkedIn profile pic ribbon.
• Eunoia is a list of 700+ words that don't translate, like "Kairosclerosis," which is the moment when you realize that you're happy but simultaneously destroy that happiness by overthinking it.
• Real photos that look fake.
• Write down 27 things.
• Ace Frehley knew what he was doing when he painted his face.

Words of Wisdom

We are kept from our goals not by obstacles but by a clear path to lesser goals. – Robert Brault

 All complaining comes at the expense of improving. – Jim Clayton

A true friend tells you your idea sucks before the internet does. – Anon

Each day, spend some time on two things: working toward something that will pay off years from now and appreciating something that is happening right now. – James Clear

Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness. — Elizabeth Spelman

Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. – G.K. Chesterton

Nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it. – Jonathan Haidt

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. – Ursula K. Le Guin

The camera never lies… but you can take a thousand different pictures of the same scene. – Hector Macdonald

Up Next From Filament

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